97% Climate consensus ‘denial’: the debunkers debunked

Not the least of many signs that the rationalists who have dared to doubt the official story are winning the debate on the climate is the childish bluster to which the dwindling band of true-believers resort when they meet an argument they cannot defeat.

The IPCC’s version of the vaunted “climate consensus”, in which it is about to proclaim 95% confidence on 0% evidence, is that at least half of the 0.7 Cº global warming since 1950 was manmade.

Cook et al., paid schoolboy interns in propaganda studies at Queensland Kindergarten, are not pleased with Legates et al. (2013), written by grown-ups, which demonstrated that the kids,surveying the abstracts of 11,944 papers on global climate change published from 1991-2012, had marked only 64 abstracts out of 11,944 as explicitly endorsing the IPCC’s version of consensus.

The kids themselves had gone to great lengths to contrive not to reveal that devastating fact in their headcount paper, which on that and many other grounds would not have passed peer review in a real scientific journal instead of a comic.

Scientifically speaking (if one can regard brats counting heads among scientists as science), the zit-faces’ omission to reveal just how few papers they themselves had categorized as supporting the notion that Man was the cause of at least half of the small global warming since 1950 was lamentable.

Indeed, one could argue that their lapse amounted to deception. Here is why.

The tiddlers’ seven “levels of endorsement” of climate consensus were –

1 “Explicitly states that humans are the primary cause of global warming”

2 “Explicit endorsement without quantification”

3 “Implicit endorsement”

4 “No opinion or uncertain”

5 “Implicit rejection”

6 “Explicit rejection without quantification”

7 “Explicit rejection with quantification”

The first level of endorsement, which only 43 abstracts explicitly agreed to, was equivalent to the IPCC’s version of consensus. The small fry, hoping to get away with concealing the fact that even their own skewed allocation had only marked 64 abstracts as falling in level 1, simply aggregated levels 1-3 as a single quantity.

It was this oddity that first attracted my attention to the deception. In effect, by aggregating the three pro-consensus levels of endorsement, the smelts were using a different, and not a little weird, table of endorsement levels:

3 “Endorsement”

4 “No opinion or uncertain”

5 “Implicit rejection”

6 “Explicit rejection without quantification”

7 “Explicit rejection with quantification”

The little ones’ paper was published in a comic that has thus far proven unwilling to publish much, if anything, in the way of adverse comment on what they had written. Fortunately, some of the grown-up journals (though not yet Nature or Science) are beginning to allow rationalists to give the other side of the story once again. And that has tweaked the teenies to chuck a tanty, as they say Down Under.

Reading this fascinatingly repellent whinge is like watching a Bela Lugosi B-movie while still sober. The fascination lies in the fact that anyone bothered to distribute it at all.

Well, let us debunk the debunkers’ debunkment of Legates et al’sdebunkment of the debunkers’ dismal paper.

You’re going to like this: for the tiny tots’ desperation is hilariously self-evident. Their please-sir-me-too paper says it found exactly the same “97%” “consensus” as two earlier laughable and long-discredited head-count surveys, Doorstop & Zimmerframe (2009) and Scrambledegg et al. (2010).

Well, here is how the kiddiwinks attempted to attack Dave Legates and his colleagues, of whom I am proud to be one.

First they quote the introduction to their own paper, which had said: “We examined a large sample of the scientific literature on global [climate change], published over a 21 year period, in order to determine the level of scientific consensus that human activity is very likely causing most of the current GW (anthropogenic global warming, or AGW).”

Yet their paper had not given the answer, because it was far too low. It revealed just how few abstracts had explicitly stated support for the IPCC’s version of consensus. That was the last think the diddumses wanted.

Now that they have been caught out, they say this:

“The IPCC position (humans causing most global warming) was represented in our categories 1 and 7, which include papers that explicitly endorse or reject/minimize human-caused global warming, and also quantify the human contribution. [Yup, you’ve seen it too, but try to keep a straight face for just a little longer].

“Among the relatively few abstracts (75 in total) falling in these two categories, 65 (87%) endorsed the consensus view.”

Just like that, the rugrats eliminated 99.4% of the papers in their sample, claiming 87% support for the IPCC’s version of consensus among just 75 papers. And that’s an even smaller sample than the 79 analyzed by Doorstop & Zimmerframe (2010), and not much more than a third of the 200 analyzed by Scrambledegg et al. (2009).

Opinion pollsters would not regard a sample size of less than 1000 as being statistically reliable, and even then only if steps had been taken to eliminate bias.

The result is even more nonsensical even than that. For it should be obvious even to the wee lambkins that those abstracts they had assigned to categories 5 and 6, as well as those in category 7, did not and would not endorse the IPCC’s version of consensus, for they had all implicitly or explicitly rejected the notion that Man has any influence on the climate at all.

So, suspending disbelief in the tiny sample size that the children’s method engenders, let us do the math for them, for they are not old enough to do it themselves and Miss Prism, their amiably dotty and self-evidently over-indulgent nanny and tutor, is on annual leave in Bunbury, Western Australia.

There were 43 abstracts explicitly endorsing the IPCC’s version of consensus. But there were 54 in level 5; 15 in level 6; and 9 in level 7. Total sample size was thus a not exactly significant 121 out of 11,944 papers, or just 1% of what was already a smallish sample of the entire literature. So the consensus, on their own dopey basis, is not the 97% they originally published, nor even the 87% they now claim, but a mere 35.5%.

And how do the babes-in-arms answer Legates et al.? They say that we have taken “quantification … to the extreme”, because our paper “focuses exclusively on the papers that quantified human-caused global warming and takes these as a percentage of all [11,944] abstracts captured in the literature search, thus claiming the consensus is not 97%, but rather 0.3%.”

Well, at least they have understood the math now.

And, whether these intellectual minnows like it or not, focusing on quantities, rather than elaborately suppressing inconvenient truths by carefully not focusing on quantities, is what grown-up mathematicians and scientists do.

Next, these critters draw a spectacularly bad analogy between our manifestly correct arguments against their now-discredited paper and the notion that just because CO2 represents only 0.04% of the atmosphere it cannot cause much warming. Seems they have not yet heard of the logarithmically-diminishing returns from adding CO2 to an atmosphere that already has 0.04% CO2 in it.

The central dodginesses in the tweety-pies’ argument are the carefully implicit assumptions that if 97.1% of those few that expressed an opinion one way or the other on global warming say or imply we can cause some warming, 97% of those not expressing an opinion would say the same if asked; that 97% of the entire sample would also say or imply we caused at least half of the global warming since 1950; and that, as Mr Obama’s twitteratus tweeted, the same 97% would go still further and say the warming we had caused or might cause was “dangerous”.

Non-sequitur piled upon non-sequitur, and all depending upon the authors’ failure to adhere to a single, clear definition of consensus throughout.

What does the silly Cook survey really reveal? It reveals the utter stupidity of all such headcounts among scientists; despite the authors’ attempt at artful suppression, it reveals the truly interesting and no doubt unintended result that explicit support among climate scientists for the IPCC’s version of consensus is vanishingly different from zero; and, above all, it reveals that the overwhelming majority of climate scientists do not express political opinions about the climate in their published papers. They just get on with the science.

In that last thought, perhaps, lies the hope for this once-honorable discipline that the likes of Cook et al., and those who fund them,have done so much to drag into the dirt.

Lies, damned lies and statistics. We can look forward to more and more desperate and fanciful BS coming out in a desperate attempt to get us to believe. Eventually the propaganda machine will run out of puff/fluff and implode into the sea of treachery from which it emerged.There is a strong possibility that the AGW rubbish will be conveniently “forgotten”by the UN in 2015 to make way for the “Millenium 2015” project.

A careful reading of the good Lord’s post would appear to indicate a certain level of dissatisfaction with the presumed integrity of Cooked et al’s school project.
Well done, (and so they should be!) LOL.

I reckon government funded pseudo science should come with the following warning printed in big red friendly letters across the title page:

Intelligence Warning: this paper/analysis/report/summary is very likely to contain the following: bias, misrepresentation, exaggeration and ignorance. Readers are advised to consult other independent sources, cross reference and perform their own science before depending upon on any results or conclusions contained within. No warranty, whether direct or implied, is given as to the correct application of scientific methods. Here be dragons!

Only then can we be assured that the right kind of approach can be ensured to such works of poor fiction.

Why must Monckton be such a boor about being right? I cringe every time I see his writing. He is not the counter-propagandist he fancies he is. He is a strutting, graceless, self-regarding, triumphalist rabble-rouser. Stop caressing him. He rallies the less thoughtful sceptics (the mere “deniers”) but he persuades no one. He doesn’t even try. Send him to find a platform elsewhere.

The insults should stay in. Cook, et al, deserve it by their behavior and their vituperative reaction to any criticism of their methods, and their failure to supply the original data in full. They sneer at anyone who questions their methods or results. They are the Reinhart and Rogoff of the climate world, and they are causing as much damage as Reinhart and Rogoff have.

Re: my comment at September 10, 2013 at 3:51 am
By way of explanation, Reinhart and Rogoff’s research work “purported to find a magical debt ratio beyond which economic growth plummets to negative territory.” That debt-to-GDP ratio was 90%. So Reinhart and Rogoff recommended austerity measures, adopted worldwide to the great harm of citizens in the countries where it was adopted. People are still suffering from their thinking. Spain? Greece?

The problem was (1) Reinhart and Rogoff left out huge chunks of data (and countries) that would have rendered their argument moot, and (2) refused to share their data. A grad student finally got it out of them after five years and uncovered the deception. It was published early this year; it took the grad student over a year to accept that he was seeing what the data was actually showing.

Look, it was a dodgy study, there is lots of information out there to demonstrate that. However demeaning and making personal insults at the research assistants in every other line is below you and you really should avoid a race to the bottom on insults. Ok, I know everyone does it, but if what you say is correct you don’t need to mimic Sceptical science to prove your point.

David Riser says:
September 10, 2013 at 4:09 am
I third the “take the insults out”. Why fall to their level; that blog is not worth reading or naming.

Becausethis blog is worth reading, and it’s entertaining, and it won’t make a damn bit of difference to the SkS people. Further, they are not the standard that the people on this blog attain to, and they don’t deserve the respect you would accord an honorable opponent.

Several people here have called witty and accurate descriptive phrases “insults”.
NO! Cook et al. deserve all the derision which can be piled on them for their shameful damage to science and the reputation of science.

If you want to see insults then refer to the defamations the kiddywinks have doled out to anybody who challenges their nonsense.

Suppose that a pharmaceutical company carried out a study to determine the efficacy of a drug. At the end of the study, a statistician summarized their results: 32.6% per cent of the subjects improved to the treatment to some extent, 66.4% of the subjects reported no change in their condition and the condition of 0.7% per cent of the subjects deteriorated. Thus, the statistician reported that the treatment with the drug produced an improvement in 32.6% of the subjects.

The company decided that they don’t like the results as reported by the statistician so they bring in the Cookup Gang to re-evaluate the analysis. The latter point out that the statistician had included those subjects in which the drug had produced no effect and that only those who had in fact responded to the treatment in some way should be considered when evaluating how successfully the drug works: 32.6/(32.6 + 0.7) = 0.979 or 97.9% of the subjects whose condition responded to the treatment in some material way show improvement.

I sincerely doubt that any drug regulation agency would agree that 97.9% represents the “improvement rate” in any meaningful fashion because eliminating the subjects whose condition was unchanged is clearly not a rational approach for calculating the percentage of subjects whose condition improved due to the treatment.

But why stop there. One can create a 97% “consensus” among a million people on any topic just as easily with only 100 determined individuals. Simply have 97 of these “agree” and 3 of them “disagree” and you don’t need to worry about including the other million people who have chosen not to offer a position.

Given the structure of this ineptly designed and even more ineptly executed “scientific study”, if Cook et al was trying to provide genuine convincing evidence about the level of consensus for (C)AGW, eliminating the large majority of the cases which did had chosen not to explicitly state a specific position on global warming was scientifically dishonest.

There is a great tradition that the accused take. Giordano Bruno’s Spaccio de la bestia trionfante, or The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast, is one example although it was not a blog. ;-) He indicted the church that was indicting him. There’s a point at which you say Basta!

@policycritic
This is off topic. Reinhart and Rogoff are experienced and respected researchers (unlike Cook & co). They are rather cautious in their policy advice (unlike Cook & co). They make all their data freely available to anyone (unlike Cook & co). When an error was discovered in Reinhart and Rogoff’s data, they fessed up and worked overnight to assess the implications (unlike Cook & co).

Mark Richardson, a co-author from Reading University, actually went further with this deliberately misleading quote

” “We want our scientists to answer questions for us, and there are lots of exciting questions in climate science. One of them is: are we causing global warming? We found over 4000 studies written by 10 000 scientists that stated a position on this, and 97 per cent said that recent warming is mostly man made.”

If you feel the “insults” should be taken out, perhaps if you write to “the temporary delegate from the Republic of Myanmar”, he may consider apologising to any children he may have inadvertently insulted in his article.

Respectfully, they didn’t, and wouldn’t, supply the data for five years. Check it out. They are tenured Harvard professors. Yes. Thomas Herndon got the data five years after their paper appeared and there were huge gaps. (I’m working from memory here, and it’s way past my bedtime.) They left out Canada, New Zealand, and Australia in their data sets (a whole decade) that would have dramatically altered their findings. You can look at Japan to know that their thesis doesn’t cut it. But they managed to seduce the IMF who used their original findings as a cudgel.

People are physically, mentally, and emotionally suffering from the effects of their work, Dr. Tol.Really suffering.

I class anything from Cook as just about worthy to feature in Viz’s “Letterbocks”, and that’s pushing the limits even for Viz. Some not actually funny, but completely stupid, which makes it funny! It’s like converting the 0.3% consensus in his work to look like 97%! As with many comic strips, some are funnier than others. Viz comic strips are sedate compared to anything Cook has produced.

Wow!
I’m surprised.
When you have a bunch of jackals cornered in a net of their own making, do you poke at them with a sharp stick?
Read in context the simple points are smothered in a slurry of invective.

@policycritic
As I said, this is off topic. I do recommend that you double check you assertions. A comparison between R&R and Cook & co is hugely insulting to the former and a big compliment to the latter.

So what they did is a lot like a typical “results-driven” survey, used regularly for decades now by activists everywhere.

You set up a survey. It contains 5 choices:
1) Yes, I’m still beating my wife
2) I’m not beating my wife anymore
3) I do not beat my wife
4) I have never beaten my wife
5) People who beat their wives are despicable

Now, on a typical result set the bulk of the answers will be 3, 4 or 5. An extremely small number will honestly answer 1 or 2. A larger number will answer 1 or 2 because they think it’s funny.
The key is answer 3. Because it contains a relatively neutral statement with no qualification many people will answer it before reading the other options.

However, let the results doctors at this, and they will conclude this:
80% of respondents answered 1, 2 or 3, none of which deny that they have ever beaten their wives.
Only 15% answered 4, they have never beaten their wives.
Sadly, only 5% are actively AGAINST wife beating.

Conclusion: 80% of wives have been beaten, and 15% are at risk.
(Seriously, I have seen a similar survey published in this manner)

Plus 100.
To those who think Lord Monckton’s description of the puerile persons responsible for his paper is insulting should maybe consider the fact that satire has always had a place in politics, because what Cook et all published has nothing to do with science and is therefore richly deserved.

Thanks, Christopher Monckton. I now understand what they did. Astonishing. Mind you, whilst it may be true that scientists didn’t get involved in the politics in their papers, how many of them are now standing up to be counted in the disapproval of it? All that is required for evil to triumph, and all that.

Oh come on guys; insults? Don’t be so bloody precious. The Good Lord’s sagacious and sardonic wit are a joy to read. A veritable breath of fresh intellectual air. May he live long and prosper.

He does not stoop to their level by returning mud pie with mud pie. No, rather he slices their petulant pétard pudding with the Saracen sword of his surgical intellect, revealing their prognistications for what they really are – hot-air tantrums. Not so much hissy fits, as hissy farts…

So let him have his say in his own inimitable way, for I’m sure it brings great cheer to many of my fellow lurkers – he certainly always brightens up my day!

I’ve never seen so many euphemisms for children in one piece in my lifetime. I don’t think his lordship was insulting the kids as much as he was putting together a work of art. The stuffed shirts need to loosen up and take a laugh when they can get one.

It is possible to carry out the same sort of analysis on papers in genetics to see how many endorse Darwinian evolution by natural selection.
Creationists and ID’ers have done this and asserted that the very small number that explicitly endorse Darwinian natural selection indicate that the science does not represent a consensus support of evolution because so few papers in the field explicitly endorse it.

Biologists claim that Darwinian evolution is the basic, underlying theory that makes sense of biological observations, and yet it is almost never mentioned explicitly in any current paper on genes or species change.
GHG effect causing warming is a theory somewhat older than Darwins evolution, and AGW is also an older theory than the DNA genetic theory of evolution.
Perhaps the notable ABSENCE of specific endorsement of the underlying theory in both cases has a common cause.
And it is not because less than 90% of the published biological research does not accept the basics of Darwinian evolution, any more than the lack of specific mention of AGW is a sign of any lack of support for the theory. Rather in both cases the theory is so well established that over 90% take it as a given.

Quibbling over whether the majority of peer reviewed research in the biological field endorse Darwinian natural selection as the mode of evolution when so few explicitly mention it makes creationists look idiotic.
Are AGW rejectionists going down the same path?

I understand your objection to my parallelism. Objection duly noted. You’re right in that a paper by a grad student in psychology and his buds aided by crowdsourced assistants (who even objected on a blog to what they were doing) does not meet the professional level of Reinhart and Rogoff’s careers.

But the consequence of the results of what they did–and let’s admit that Cook et al just lucked out bigtime–has had similar effects. Reinhart and Rogoff did not rush to fix it overnight; they sought to minimize the damage. Here are two papers I saved since the April 2013 Herndon revelation that called their original findings into question. Reinhart and Rogoff got caught with their pants down, but they won’t suffer; they’re tenured.

Cook, et al, deserve ridicule since their “study” was terribly skewed and intellectually dishonest. A dry recitation of their errors would have been both just another recitation of the errors and rather boring. Satire and ridicule is more readible, but it did tend to go on a bit.

He clearly dropped the ball. For these guys are debunking the debunkers. So he could have written:
Well, let us debunk the debunkers’ debunkment of Legates et al’s debunkment of the debunking’s debunkers’ dismal paper.

This demolition job by Lord Monckton should be sent to Ed Davey, entitled ‘required reading’, as he was so vocal in quoting the ‘97% of scientists’ b*ll*cks in his interview with Andrew Neil on telly recently…

Excuse me, Policycritic but asserting that the suffering from reduced government spending is intolerable is like saying that the man that suffers because he’s stopped drinking after 30 years because he knows he’ll die if he doesn’t , should continue to drink to avoid the suffering.
Greece and Spain have put themselves out of good options, and in the US we are rapidly doing the same thing.

Ironically, the canonical 97% has appeared elsewhere, confirming with dead certainty the ‘urgency’ of climate something-or-other:

“Certified Emission Reduction credits from the program closed unchanged yesterday at 58 euro cents ($0.78) a metric ton, according to data from ICE Futures Europe. They’ve plunged 97 percent since reaching a record high of 22.54 euros a ton in July 2008…”
Bloomberg, 09/04/2013

On 2nd reading I thought the sort of nonsense they dish out and the fact that dana gets away with using the term “denier” in a UK national comic and censoring legitimate, on topic comment, SkS are getting what they deserve from Monckton,

policycritic says:
September 10, 2013 at 4:17 am
The problem was (1) Reinhart and Rogoff left out huge chunks of data (and countries) that would have rendered their argument moot, and (2) refused to share their data.
================
what you have described is textbook climate science.

I would have liked to send this to a friend whom I’ve gotten to start wavering in his support for AGW but can’t because the tone makes it come off as a rant rather than an analysis. Can someone point me to an article or essay that covers the same points without the snark?

chris y says:
September 10, 2013 at 6:25 am
“Certified Emission Reduction credits from the program closed unchanged yesterday at 58 euro cents ($0.78) a metric ton, according to data from ICE Futures Europe.
=========
While in BC we are paying $30/ton to Pacific Carbon Trust for something that is worth less than $1. Mostly this is $$ millions in taxpayer money that is being siphoned out of the school and health systems, and funneled to private industry. From there ???

@- RCM
” Can someone point me to an article or essay that covers the same points without the snark?”

Unfortunately there are no points in the essay, remove the snark and its empty of any content.

The supposed errors in Cook et al that the good lord asserts make no difference to the this and many other studies that confirm that well over 90% of the published research and scientists involved support the theory that AGW is responsible for the majority of warming measured over the last century, and AGW is the cause of the objectively measured energy imbalance at the TOA.

I would have liked to send this to a friend whom I’ve gotten to start wavering in his support for AGW but can’t because the tone makes it come off as a rant rather than an analysis. Can someone point me to an article or essay that covers the same points without the snark?

policycritic says:
September 10, 2013 at 4:17 am
So Reinhart and Rogoff recommended austerity measures, adopted worldwide to the great harm of citizens in the countries where it was adopted.
==============
very similar to climate science. they reversed cause and effect. countries with slow growth have high debt. therefore they concluded that reducing debt would spur growth. it didn’t. why? because the data was not showing what happens is you reduce debt. it was showing what happens if you increase debt, and the reader was left to conclude that the data would still be valid if you ran time in reverse.

we have similar situation in climate science. we have rising temps and rising CO2. therefore climate science concludes that reducing CO2 will reduce temps. yet the data doesn’t show what will happen if you reduce CO2. The reader is left to conclude that the data will still be valid if you ran time in reverse.

This is a classic cause and effect problem. The data is collected in forward time, yet the conclusion is based upon running time in reverse, and assuming that cause and effect will not be affected.

The warmists as their interest is activism rather than the scientific search for truth or responsible effective government/policy, have no problem with enthusiastically announcing that flawed analysis of cherry picked warmist published papers’ abstracts supports the assertion that we must and should spend trillions of dollars on greens scams (no need for boring estimates of costs, benefits, or financing questions).

No need to quantify how much warming has occurred as compared to normal cyclic climate change, to complicate the discussion with any scientific details.Propaganda does not change reality, regardless of the enthusiasm of its supporters or the depth of their ignorance.

The warmists are hoping the fact that there has been no warming for 16 years and there is observational evidence of the start of cooling – certainly no warming – will be ignored by the public and media as we we will be distracted by their silly paper.

That requires a great deal of chutzpah.

Spending trillions of dollars on greens scams will end badly. The warmists are so deeply into their fantasy that they either are protected from considering the fact that the developing countries are deeply in debt and facing currency collapse if significant and painful structural changes are not made. When there is no money left to spend borrowed or newly printed, the government will be force to cut spending.

It is terrific the liberal governments have discovered quantitative easing.

I’m also gonna throw my support into the fewer-insults camp. Although Lord Monckton is a clever fellow and likely took this approach deliberately. I wonder if he’s intentionally trying to provoke Cook et al into responding so he can hit them with something he’s holding in reserve.

As someone who occasionally registers a concern with the tone of various comments, let me say that I’m not in the least concerned about this satire for the reason best explained by Mr. Leon below:

John Leon says:
September 10, 2013 at 4:57 am

“To those who think Lord Monckton’s description of the puerile persons responsible for his paper is insulting should maybe consider the fact that satire has always had a place in politics, because what Cook et all published has nothing to do with science and is therefore richly deserved.”

Even to my unpracticed eye, the Cook paper, together with its publication, was not, in any way, shape, or form, a scientific endeavor; it was politics, pure and simple. And, since the beginning of time, ridicule has always been one of the most effective political weapons, provided the opponent has freely provided the ammunition, as Cook, et al (including their publisher), most certainly did.

Chris, it appears something good has come out of this paper then. Who knew that 97% would be so spot on. It appears then the true mistake was in reversing a sign. Cook et al will be happy to fix that I am sure, AND take credit for being dead on right regarding 97%.

Here, let me help with the erratum rewrite:

“Here we applied the well-known strategy referred to in the literature as “slave labor” to analyse the data. However, upon further examination it was indeed discovered that not only was a sign reversed, we also uncovered a highly significant finding related to our published results. The stockmarket on carbon credits did indeed plunge 97 percent since reaching a record high of 22.54 euros a ton in July 2008…”

I am not really sure I saw any insults in this post, but sceptics so rarely insult alarmists, that it was almost like a breath of fresh air, but the sort of fresh air I would not like to see too often.

When tearing alarmists and their theories a new one, which Monckton does with such commensurate ease, that usually is sufficient. After all, it is alarmist lies, deceptions, cherry picking and data manipulation we wish to stop, and the best way to do that is not to stoop to their level and especially to that of John Cook.

May I inject a rant about current survey-based research results? Ever since “Survey Monkey” became the go to source of public opinion about everything from public school employees to government spending, everyone thinks there is nothing to it. Create a survey and publish the results in a journal on a shoe string budget. What’s not to like? Keeps the graduate TA’s busy and puts more published research on the ol’ resume. GAWWWWWDDDDD!!!!!!

Trust me folks, social science research into survey design and pitfalls will give you nightmares. Do NOT even THINK about putting your toe into those waters. You will regret the public display of your ineptitude for life. That Cook still thinks so highly of himself is beyond me. And if the IPCC includes his survey results in their next publication, we can all assume the rest of it and any scientist that tacks their name onto the publication is suspect. Why? Standards for acceptance is too low. hmmmm. Where have I heard that before?

Mr Monckton, sir, It is with great delight that I read your analysis of this dubious paper. Those people here that seem to have a problem with your satire and wit are oblivious to the normal rebellious nature of most of the people in the old English empire.

Myself in the past have recommended that you be made an honorary Australian, the election we just concluded will see some of the sins of the past wiped. Once upon a time the Governor General of Australia was a Queens appointment, we have usurped that. To our disappointment we have put in place some real doosies. It would be an honour to have a real genuine English gentleman such as yourself as our Governor General.

To all you Yank’s that have taken offense at this tongue in cheek blog from Mr Monckton lighten up, the left and the politically correct hate being mocked more than they hate being proved wrong.

Quick Comment for the author; obviously their paper was complete garbage. A thorough rebuttal was in order.

On the other hand, name calling and snide references diminish the integrity of your arguments.

If you have to call them children to make a point, do so and make the point, but the sarcasm and denigration permeated the article from beginning to end. This seems childish in and of itself. Do not sink to their level.

I really wish someone else would have made this point, as I do admire your work.

Thank you Lord Monckton. Well said.The IPCC’s version of the vaunted “climate consensus”, in which it is about to proclaim 95% confidence on 0% evidence, is that at least half of the 0.7 Cº global warming since 1950 was manmade.
Should this happen, the climate catastrophe is over, with humans causing warming at a rate of .56°C warming per century, .35°C in 60 years. Well within measurement error

I’ve just been listening to part of the UK’s Science and Technology Committee hearing on Bishop Hill. James Randerson came up with the 97% consensus nonsense again. Outside the sceptic community that figure has stuck. Despite all the good work on revealing its being completely flawed, Cook’s paper has done its job.

DrJohnGalan says:
September 10, 2013 at 8:15 am
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Randerson works for the Guardian. If a full on Ice Age started overnight, he’d blame it on AGW. Ignore the Guardian, they are putting themselves out of business. Huge campaigns against tax avoidance, yet they are based in the Cayman Islands – to avoid tax. And an editor who, the more money they lose the higher his salary goes. Ghastly rag. Ignore them

On top of Monckton’s argument, the fact that by limiting the headcount to “The Literature” is only looking at papers that got through the gatekeepers. We know from the climategate e-mails that these gatekeepers were working tirelessly to keep sceptical views out fo the literature. As Monckton was alluding to, for proper statistical data, all efforts must be made to eliminate bias; whereas this study made an obvious effort to add bias.

drjohngalan says:
September 10, 2013 at 8:36 am
jeremyp99 says:
September 10, 2013 at 8:31 am
… Ghastly rag. Ignore them.
I agree with you, and I do!
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Same here. It’s very sad. I was brought up near Manchester, and much of my early vocabulary expansion was the result of reading the back of the then Manchester Guardian as my old man read it at breakfast. In those days, it was a Liberal paper in the old meaning of the word; the move London and the change to just The Guardian heralded its takeover by Left Liberals (in the new meaning of the word), which led to its current degraded incarnation.

Entertaining. But IMO fightend a rear guard skirmish,mahnende resource could be better deployed elsewhere. Even before the paper was submitted they had a PR plan to use it to paint skeptics as scientific cranks. The MSM bit, of course. Skeptics lost that scirmish.
More important is AR5 SPM and 95% confidence assertion. Zweirs is the lead authornon attribution, and coauthored a paper just out (after the AR5 cutoff) saying the pause falsifies the models. A host of papers say sensitivity in the CMIP5 archive is too high, again after the cutoff. AR5 leaked SPM FOD says ECS is still 3+, and temp rise under RCP8.5 is 3.7C. If they go with the 95% certain meme and those numbers, they will look like idiots and governments! Have raised questions. If they don’t the official edifice begins to crumble. That is the story the MSM should be reporting, and it is prospective.

Some commenters here seem to think that the SKS crowd and their science should be accorded the sort of respect due to serious science. Monckton does not make that error. He should not be faulted for his derision and mockery of what is aptly termed junk science. And no, John Cook cannot be said to be an honest type. You see, junk science is produced by junk scientists.

@izen says:
September 10, 2013 at 5:30 am
“…any more than the lack of specific mention of AGW is a sign of any lack of support for the theory.”

I understand your point, but the Cook et al case doesn’t fit that description. Cook defined his hypothesis, and I believe chose his sample set based on searches for papers that contained the words, “climate change”. We all know that there are hundreds of papers contributing to the climate change subject area that do not explicitly use those words in the text.

Cook named his own poison by defining the hypothesis, and selecting the data using his own methodology. He couldn’t arrive at his predetermined conclusion using the actual data, so he threw 2/3 of it away, and then arrived at his conclusion by using a ridiculously small subset of the remaining data. Then he had to play games with the numbers.

I believe the consensus problem comes down to this. Nobody can articulate the exact consensus statement with which 90% + of climate scientists agree. If the consensus statement cannot be articulated, how can you measure agreement or disagreement?

Delicious humour! The treehut gang make themselves a target for satire every time they try to remove their feet from their mouths, I Hope they were among those tweeting that they would leave Australia if Tony Abbot was elected Prime Minister of Australia, but then should we inflict these incompetents on some other country. Gosh no more selfies granted by an indulgent system for services rendered. They are the standing joke of the Australian scene………and I love it so!

Well before the B-17’s were making it to Berlin, two Mosquitoes made Berlin and destroyed the “Radio Berlin” broadcasting tower. Think of Lord M. in this light! Getting deep into enemy territory and knocking out their propaganda at the source.

@ richardscourtney”Lord Monckton rubbed the noses of the kiddywinks in what they have done.”

Yes, but he also took the low (and childish) road of playground name-calling.

”Since you think he was “losing the debate” perhaps you would be so kind as to say what you think would be winning the debate?

I don’t think he’s losing the debate. He’s saying he’s losing the debate. If you say if you exhibit “X” then you are “Y” and then you proceed to exhibit “X” then you’re saying you’re “Y”.

Look, I’m all for ridiculing climatology, I’ve done it myself on many occasions (one of mine was made a post: No Joy in Mudville). Ridicule what they say, what they do, what they conclude, etc. etc., and even pointing out that they’re inexperienced green-behind-the-ears know-nothings is fair game as long as it’s not grade school playground level slurs.

I just think the post would’ve been better without the multiple ways to call someone a young whippersnapper. I mean Lord Monckton has all the facts on his side, why detract from that?

On the other hand, I may be making more of it than it needs to be, but when you grow up with the name John, you just don’t find the name-calling stuff funny anymore after about age 6.

Well before the B-17′s were making it to Berlin, two Mosquitoes made Berlin and destroyed the “Radio Berlin” broadcasting tower.

Indeed before the USA even “knew” that there was a war, the bombing of Berlin had a far bigger impact than that of a few bombs going off. Firstly, Reichsmarshall Meier (previously known as “Göring”) was pushed away from the centre of the circle and had to (as I heard it) change strategy in the so-called Battle of Britain; bombing London as a priority instead of the strategic airfields and RADAR used by the RAF and other defence forces.

Cook et all conducted a “survey/review” of other people’s work in a way that was devastatingly bad, unscientific, and stupid. We know this because they announced it online and asked for volunteers to rank abstracts written by other people to see if they could tell by the ABSTRACT of the papers what the AUTHORS really believed regarding AGW.

They also planned prior to conducting the survey that they would manipulate the data either way it turned out. We know this because someone in their email loop ratted them out.

REAL/SINCERE scientists saw it for what it was before it was even written/released and sent out alarm bells.

Cook et al IGNORED those alarms and went full steam ahead with their “project” flaws and all. Wrote a paper about it, then promoted their results with the media.

REAL/SINCERE scientists immediately tore the report to shreds and exposed it for what it was. Trash. There are numerous take downs of this paper online, including very grown up, mature ones by Lord Monkton-do your own homework and google those will ya?

The original Cook et al paper is NOT what prompted Lord Monkton’s piece today. Nope.
What prompted Lord Monkton to write this piece today, is that AFTER the REAL/SINCERE scientists tore the paper apart, and exposed it for trash, Cook, Nuccitelli etc did not admit their mistakes. Did not just shut up about it and give the paper a proper burial. NO. THEY went online on their little website and wrote a hysterical, whiney, pathetic, and completely pathetic article in which THEY attempt to discredit the people who scientifically demonstrated how bad their paper was. They DEFENDED their trash by throwing the online equivalent of a temper tantrum.

So, having ALREADY, previously proven how unscientific, false, and embarrassing the Cook et al paper was in mature, complete, un-snarky terms, I believe that Lord Monkton’s response to the latest Cook/Nuccitelli hissy fit is completely fitting and I welcomed it.

Just think of him like Josh the cartoonist only the good Lord uses words to paint pictures that make us laugh. The image I have in my head now is HILARIOUS.

Clearly, Lord Monckton has made a fatal error to his analysis if he has said
“64 abstracts out of 11,944″ (i.e. 0.54% of 11,944)
when the website claims
“65 abstracts out of 11,944″ (i.e. 0.54% of 11,944).

Of course, only Lord Monckton can say why he used 64. But the childish nature of the paper’s defenders is demonstrated by your thinking that this misprint (if that is what it is) lifts their paper out of the garbage bin in which it so richly deserves to be.

Oh, leave in the insults, I believe they’re genetically encoded in Lord Monckton’s DNA. And his argument(s) is(are) spot on, there is dodgy everything throughout the Cook et al paper. But Lord Monckton has missed the primary point. Science has as much to do with consensus as a football game (American football or that European “football” we in America know as “soccer”, it doesn’t matter) has to do with a shuttlecock. It just doesn’t belong. My mother told me many times as I grew up, “If everybody else jumped off a cliff, would you do it, too?” Sometimes, maybe even most times, one has to think for oneself, and I would think that applies in science more so than any other field. There was a “consensus” that the Earth was the center of the universe, and everything orbited around the earth, until Galileo presented the heliocentric theory. He spent the rest of his life under house arrest for defying the “consensus”, but does that make him wrong? Well, if the NASA scientists had tried to apply the geocentric model to the trip to the Moon, I don’t think the astronauts would have ever got there. So Lord Monckton and everybody can call the Cook et al paper whatever they want, insulting or otherwise, just don’t call it “science”.

Re: my comment at September 10, 2013 at 3:51 am
By way of explanation, Reinhart and Rogoff’s research work “purported to find a magical debt ratio beyond which economic growth plummets to negative territory.” That debt-to-GDP ratio was 90%. So Reinhart and Rogoff recommended austerity measures, adopted worldwide to the great harm of citizens in the countries where it was adopted. People are still suffering from their thinking. Spain? Greece?

We highlighted the method by which Spain’s and other European austerity plans are put into effect above: raising taxes is the preferred modus operandi, and that is why EU austerity keeps not working.

There are indeed “deeper economic problems.” The promised structural reforms are implemented at a snail’s pace and are going nowhere near far enough. Government has continued to grow, even while the overall economy has shrunk. If anything, government should have been shrinking at a faster pace than the economy, which would have allowed it to cut rather than hike taxes. Pertinent historical examples of how to best implement austerity do exist: US president Harding demonstrated how it’s done in 1921, and so did the Baltic states after 2008. Even in these cases a more effective implementation would have been possible, but the fundamental approach was the correct one: shrink government as fast as possible and repeal as many regulations standing in the way of business as you can. Bail out no one. Grit your teeth and allow for a steep short-term downturn, knowing that a sound foundation for renewed growth will be established. Obviously this is not how things were done in Spain, Italy, Portugal or Greece (which will require yet another bailout – the third — later this year).
……………………
It should be noted at this point that the widely hailed “success” of Mario Monti’s reforms was largely a successful PR exercise. Nearly every measure implemented by the lifelong bureaucrat was a mistake of monumental proportions. The planned deficit consolidation relied mainly on the imposition of additional taxes in the middle of a recession. Obviously, government has continued to grow in the process. The structural reforms implemented by Monti’s government, especially those of Italy’s byzantine labor regulations, were de minimis.
………………….
Recently the Portuguese supreme court struck down yet another government measure aimed at lowering the expenses for the country’s bureaucracy:

“Portugal’s highest court has ruled that the government’s plan to make it easier to sack public servants is unconstitutional. The court said the measures contravened state job safety guarantees.

It is a set-back for Portugal’s policy of reducing government spending in the wake of an international bailout. The government has promised creditors a big reduction in its budget deficit. Other austerity measures have already been rejected by the same court.

The bill was seen as important because of its potential longer-term structural effect on spending cuts, Reuters news agency reports.”

The government may be bankrupt, but it still cannot sack any civil servants! This appears to be an example of one set of bureaucrats protecting another. “Job safety guarantees?” Whoever came up with those guarantees was of course buying votes – and this is the result. What financial guarantees can a bankrupt government really be expected to uphold?

A fine skewering of the contemptible Cook, et al. Their survey is an exercise in self-fulfilling prophecy. Not only is the basis for the evaluation suspect, it hardly represents a proper sample, especially when considering the prevailing politics of the peer-review crowd. Similarly, my preliminary research last night at the bar revealed that approximately 97% of beer drinkers actually like drinking beer.

Christopher Monckton – I can see you had some fun writing this post. And I loved reading it. Good on ya (as they say down here in Aussie-land). It’s good to start the day with a few chuckles mixed in with real science showing the way. Very nicely done and I thank you. :)

I hate this blog not having a reply to, coming late to the party loses all context. Suffice to say our noble Lord is bang on right, the detractors above are pathetic. You really don’t want to take on Dr Tol unless you have your big pants on as Judith C. would say.

The chances of getting another 97% were always small given the variables. Indeed so small that claiming it give the game away The 97% as become part of the AGW dogma and needed to be supported no matter the facts , like ‘the stick’ . Hence why it could not have be say 90% , for that although equally untrue but impressive looking would have meant an challenge, if only a small one , to the detail of the dogma .
Sounds familiar , well it should its the same approach taken by religions fanatics, its not enough to believe you must believe in the ‘right way’ and be unquestioning to its claims .

There probable is quite a few working in this area that wish the ‘settled science’ claim , and this is were the need for a dogma came from in the first place , had never be made . And to them I say , tough luck, you kept your mouths firmly shut when it was all going well for you and were more than happy to keep the grant money flowing in . Now your feet are being held to the fire I have no sympathy for you .at all, get used to it because the people will not forget your years of selling BS.

Thanks csb. I now see that the 65 count from the Consensus Project website includes the article titled:
“Now What Do People Know About Global Climate Change?”
This was assigned the Category:”Not climate related”
so it is not include in the text file.

transitive verb
___: to treat with insolence, indignity, or contempt : affront; also : to affect offensively or damagingly

— in·sult·er noun

— in·sult·ing·ly adverb

Examples of INSULT

___She felt they had insulted her by repeatedly ignoring her questions.
___We were greatly insulted by his rudeness.
___They’re understandably insulted when no one asks for their opinion on a matter that affects them so much.

How can anyone write an accurate description of Cooks et al childish yet widely published and tweeted silly survey without insults?

An insult is the nature and/or manner of the speech, not the words. Lord Monckton’s excellent breadth of descriptive words meaning childish or immature made the reading very entertaining.

The description of the cooked results or their insidious insistence on pretending they’re correct would be insulting to anyone and hurts all the more because it is truth, not sugar or whitewash.

To those seeking to force a whitewash or sugar coating by insisting on a ‘politically correct’ less descriptive summary, grow up.

Smell the roses when they’re roses, don’t try and force descriptions of less pleasant materials to not describe reality just so someone’s sensitive side is upset. If I’m going to smell offal and sewage I darn well want to know it when reading a summary!

I draw a different conclusion from the results of Cook et al. The scientific process is simply not amenable to quantifying the likelihood that humans are the primary cause of global warming (categories 1 and 7). All such numbers are basically just gut opinions of scientists, and opinion is the antithesis of science. This presents the absurdity that the more scientists there are who set aside their professional objectivity and “quantify” their agreement with the idea that humans cause global warming, relative to the number of scientists who set aside their professional objectivity to “quantify” their disagreement with that proposition, the more the “consensus” builds.

As there was a very fiendish and deceptive approach by Cook et al. to begin with, you could easily smell this in their “letter of intend” they send around also to WUWT at the start of their premeditated “investigation”, I think Mr. Mockton is very benign and cautious, giving them the benefit of the doubt by supposing they are just naive, like kids are.

Are they? You can place them somewhere on the spectrum that goes from naive to outright malevolent and make your own choice. This is the real choice Mr. Monckton’s satire leaves the reader. Clever literary ploy. They fully deserve this treat.

Such as looking among the major surface indices to see which one has its 1979-onward portion correlating best with the major satellite indices of lower troposphere measurements. Results: My favorite is HadCRUT3, which is less-warming than HadCRUT4, latest version of NCDC, and latest version of GISS.

Something else about all of the major surface indices, is an item showing up in all of them, and to greatest extent in HadCRUT3: A periodic natural cycle, with period around 64 years. It may be unsteady in amplitude and frequency, but a trend it held for 128 years explains about 40% of the warming from the early 1970s to around 2005. Smoothed HadCRUT3 peaked at 2004-2005, and has yet to since get warmer.

As for the manmade warming via increase of non-H2O greenhouse gases since the early 1970s or the early 1950s, roughly 15%, possibly around 20%, of that was from greenhouse gases other than CO2. Manmade increase of atmospheric presence of these non-CO2 greenhouse gases was largely stalled in the 1990s.

Another matter is that the natural feedbacks have history of being less-positive than they recently were when the world was warmer than it recently was, and more-positive when the world was in cooler times of the past few million years. One of the feedbacks is the “lapse rate feedback”, which is a negative one that gets stronger when the atmosphere gets more greenhouse gases.

Overall, I see the post-feedback effect of modern increase of CO2 being about 40% as great as the “center track” of IPCC’s previous assessment report, AR4.

Biologists claim that Darwinian evolution is the basic, underlying theory that makes sense of biological observations, and yet it is almost never mentioned explicitly in any current paper on genes or species change.

Very few biological observations require Darwin’s underlying theory of evolution, izen. Unless, of course, you have a one-track mind.

The fatuousness of such surveys was demonstrated many years ago in “Yes Minister”, a UK comedy series about Westminster (from the days when we had comedy).

This skit is about a survey regarding the reintroduction of national service in Britain, and it demonstrates how any survey can be manipulated (whether by smelts or old retainers).

That bit of YM demonstrates the nightmarish quicksand of “surveys.” I had a sociology professor who demonstrated that very fact in 1975 or so. He had the class survey each other – same issue for everyone. Afterward there was almost a riot as it became clear there was a tremendous propensity among sociology students to follow the loudest or at least most immediate voice, except a contrary few who simply enjoyed lying to surveys. At the end of the semester he concluded the class by stating that he hoped he had convinced the majority of the class not to go into sociology and that survey design was a black art rather than a science.

To those that fault Lord Monckton’s mocking methodology, please note that Cook, Hansen, Mann, & friends will not be influenced by any scientific discussion. They only care about themselves through their perceived fame and credentials. Mockery touches their inflated self-worth in ways that reasoned argument never will.